Blizzard has released the required and recommended PC system specifications needed to participate in the StarCraft II beta test. Can your system handle the new Zerg Rush?
It doesn't look like PC gamers will have much of a problem running the StarCraft II beta. They give out Intel Pentium IV processors in cereal boxes these days (Editor's Note: no they don't), and I trip over a gigabyte of RAM getting out of bed every morning. And 32mb of video RAM? Hell, I have 32mb of VRAM installed in myself, for no apparent reason.
Of course to get the full effect you'll need a slightly beefier machine, but it's nothing compared to the Mac requirements. "Unfortunately, during this phase a Mac version will not be available." So the Mac requirements are basically a PC, or that fancy-shmancy emulation thing you Apple users do.
Here are the full recommended and required specs:
Required
Processor: Intel Pentium IV 1.3GHz, AMD XP 1500+
Operating System: Windows XP / XP64 (Service Pack 3), Windows Vista / Vista64 (service Pack 1), Windows 7 Home Premium
Memory: (Windows XP) 512mb, (Windows Vista) 1024mb, (Windows 7) 1024mb
Video Card: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or better
Hard Drive Space: 15GB
DirectX: DirectX9.0c
Recommended
Processor: Intel Pentium D, AMD 64 X2
Operating System: Windows XP / XP64 (Service Pack 3), Windows Vista / Vista64 (service Pack 1), Windows 7 Home Premium
Memory: (Windows XP) 1024mb, (Windows Vista) 2048mb, (Windows 7) 2048mb
Video Card: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better
Hard Drive Space: 15GB
DirectX: DirectX9.0c
You'll also need a valid email address and a broadband connection for Battle.net play.
See? That didn't hurt too much. Of course these are only the specs for the beta test, and the final game requirements are subject to change, but as long as you are somewhere between required and recommended you should be golden.
UPDATE: Blizzard just called to let us know that the system specs released on the page were not the system specs for the StarCraft II beta test. They are still trying to track down how the page appeared on the company's support site, suspecting that someone pasted specs from World of Warcraft into a new article. The link below is now dead, and Blizzard has a lot of phone calls to make.
Blizzard informed us that the real specs will most likely be released via a FAQ or the support site once the beta dates are announced.
Incidentally, Blizzard's Bob Colayco sounds an awful lot like a bill collector, and this update nearly didn't happen.
StarCraft II System Requirements [Blizzard Support - Thanks AJ!]